Livestock Oversupply Remains, Piglet Prices Plunge The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' (MARA) latest data release shows the domestic live piglet price fell to RMB 25.68/kg ($1.84/lb.) in mid-February. This represents a year-on-year decrease of 71.7 percent for a 7-kg piglet. In the southwest of China, piglets have sold for as little as RMB 22.68/kg ($1.63/lb.). As a result, many farms have switched to purchasing piglets rather than producing their own supply. A unnamed major domestic producer shocked the market last week with a reported purchase of 6 million piglets. Meanwhile, the combined domestic reproductive sow inventory fell to 42.9 million head in January, down from .9 percent in December according to MARA’s statis...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
From WPI Consulting
Forecasting developments in production agriculture
On behalf of a private U.S. agricultural technology provider, WPI’s team generated an econometric model to forecast the movement of concentrated corn production north and west from the traditional U.S. Corn Belt. WPI’s model has subsequently provided quantitative support to a multi-million-dollar investment into short-season corn variety development. WPI’s methodology included a series of interviews with regional grain elevators and seed consultants. Emphasizing outreach and communication with stakeholders who possess intimate sectoral knowledge – on-the-ground insights – is a regular component of WPI’s methodologies, made possible by WPI’s ever-growing network of industry contacts.